Pé’úèhésaitòŋŋú. Jošhwìnýfiitawémvale. “Keep adding water by the tablespoon until dough forms.”
Today’s entry required thinking through several new features and words, which is exciting! Especially since, unlike yesterday, I had the time and mental space to work through such things (it was quite fortuitous that yesterday’s entry went so quickly for me).
The first was that I needed a “keep X-ing” construction. I had a serial verb construction that I was using for concepts like “let, need, try”, so I used that construction for this meaning of “keep”. The base verb I selected is ‘ú, which means “to rub” in its basic sense. The idea is that, when used in this type of serial verb construction, it means to continue, to keep steady, to go right on doing this thing. The serial verb construction requires the linking particle è(h) followed by a bare verb: ‘úèhésai means “keep adding water.”
For the concept “by the tablespoon”, I used the instrumental tòŋ, which is then followed by ŋú “tablespoon”.
I needed a word for “dough” to complete the second half of this step. I created the root wése that can be used to mean either a dough or batter. If a speaker needs to be more specific, they can use the compound wémvale to refer to dough (the compound is “dough, batter” + “ball, wad”). In this case, it’s important to establish that a dough has formed, as that is quite different from wéhaiwe “batter” (that compound incorporates áíwe “liquid”). After all, I don’t want any nisse bakers adding so much water that it turns into a runny mess!
The verb fííte “to form, to shape” is transitive as a root. The reflexive prefix ný turns it into an intransitive verb meaning it takes shape or it holds together in a form. The hwì- prefix is gnomic, indicating a state of affairs.
This one was a lot of fun to work with, and now I have a lot more vocabulary to talk about working with dough!